Voters occupy Rosenberg upholstery shop

Come election time, Carlos Upholstery Shop near Rosenberg doubles as a polling site, with samples hanging along one wall and four voting machines against another. Election volunteers don’t have to ask many of the voters for their names since everybody knows just about everybody else in this heavily Hispanic neighborhood known as the Colonia or “Little Mexico.”

Precinct Judge Maria Bijarro CQ is niece of the shop owner, Carlos Muñiz, who has loaned his shop to the county for elections for decades. “Every year we have to move everything,” Bijarro said. But it’s worth it. By 4 p.m., more than 200 people had voted at the tiny shop on Vera Cruz Drive.

Outside, activists working the poll were nearly are related: Guadalupe “Lupe” Arredondo, 33, was stumping alongside his mother, Amelia Arredondo. And Alicia Flores, a 72-year-old neighborhood activist who has worked this site for 30 years herself, is joined by both her brother and her husband this election day. Lupe and the others wave at a friend or family member in almost every passing car. One is filled with teenagers who are making the poll one of their after-school stops.

“I’ve seen a lot of younger voters – a lot of high school students and it’s really great,” Lupe Arredondo said. “I know back then I wasn’t voting!”